Ellie, returning to her spot next to me.

Monica spent the full hour of the drive home leaning against my left shoulder, lost in her own thoughts. I didn't try to engage her in conversation, I had my own self- analysis in progress.

A guilty thought dogged me the entire way: I couldn't wait until I could do that with Ellie again.

I dropped off first Nate and then Ellie at their respective parents’ homes. It was a short five minute drive on to Monica's place. I guess she figured that was long enough.

We'd no sooner pulled away from Ellie's house than Monica was once again bent over my lap, extricating my limp pecker from its confines.

With an hour's worth of recharging, it was already growing in her hands and then very quickly Monica had me stuffed into her mouth.

She got me off in record time that night. I don't think I'd ever gone from cold start to eruption in less than two minutes before. But this night, Monica was on a mission. And so even after swallowing my reduced load, Monica had plenty of time to fix herself up and make herself presentable before we arrived at her place.

Without delay, once I came to a stop at the curb, she leaned over and kissed me quickly.

“Don't you forget," she said sternly, her eyes carrying the seriousness of her tone, as if she'd just proven an important point. And then she was out of the car and striding confidently up the walkway to her home.

"Don't you forget': What the hell does that mean?

The next day was a Saturday. Naturally, I slept in until about 2pm.

That evening, our group of friends got together to go see the latest crap movie. Summer blockbusters were long gone and we weren't interested in the latest Oscar-fodder. So we settled for the studio junk that didn't make the grade for a more interesting release date.

Whatever, it was just an excuse to hang out together on a weekend.

When I first ran into Nate, he kinda gave me a weird look, as if he was half- expecting me to walk up and slug him in the nose. Well, no such punch was coming and in fact I just met him with our usual back-slap-no-we're-not-friggin'- hugging-or-anything greeting. I quickly slid into the usual banter and mild flirting with our co-ed group.

A few minutes later, Ellie and Monica joined us in quick succession, bringing the group total to 8. And we proceeded to kill the evening per usual. No ugly jealousies. No veiled references to our post-game activities.

True, Ellie and Monica spent an inordinate amount of time hanging back and talking together, that sort of best-friendish behavior was nothing new, even if I suspected their conversational topic wasn't one of the usual subjects. The way the two of them kept glancing over at me didn't do much to calm my paranoia.

While it was certainly in the back of my mind and no doubt in the back of theirs, everyone acted like nothing was out of the ordinary. I could almost convince myself that it was all just a dream, that the entire episode had never happened.

And then Monday rolled around.

I found out last minute that my parents were going to be out that evening, off to see some boring Opera downtown. Of course they'd told me about it fifteen times, but unsurprisingly I'd forgotten. You'd think I would have remembered something like that as it would have given me a great chance to get Monica into my bedroom.

Alas, I'd forgotten, and thus a golden opportunity had been missed. I moaned about it to Monica at school during lunch and she chastised me for not giving her more warning to come up with some excuse not to go straight home after school. My friends similarly teased me for being a moron.

And so, after football practice, I returned to my house, resigned to an evening with hidden girlie magazines and my right hand. Hell, with no plans made I was tempted to actually join my parents and go see the stupid play... tempted... but not actually willing to go.

And so, my mom advised me that dinner was in the fridge and they hopped into Dad's Volvo and drove away.

Then at my lazy, teenaged pace, I managed to get up off the couch and start up the stairs to head for my bedroom.

I'd only gotten six steps up when the doorbell rang. I rolled my eyes and turned around. What did they forget? And why wasn't my dad using his key or coming through the garage?

I peeked out the window and got a shock when I saw Ellie standing on the welcome mat. Quickly, I unbolted and opened the door. "Ellie?" I queried.